I had an unwritten contract with my mother. She gave me a physical body and a home in which to nourish it, and in return I went to Sunday school every Sunday till I was confirmed into the school of religion of her choice.This was 1980’s South Africa. We lived in Durban, often termed “The Last British Outpost” - a pure WASP bubble where even white Afrikaners were considered foreigners. So my mother’s choice of religions for me was really between different flavours of Anglican Christianity. Even Catholicism was considered a little too “out there” to be a viable religion.

Mom had opted in her late twenties to join the Methodists. Not because of their superior ideology or any previous affiliation to this “tearaway” Anglican rebellion, but rather because she liked the singing. I guess secretly she wanted me to like it too. Behind my youthful posturing at Sunday school once a week, I now confess that I did actually kind of like a few of those melodies. Not that I would let on in front of the blushing pubescent girls in my class though, when you came from an all boys’ (all shiny white and all English) school, it was important to make a cool impression in your only mixed class in the week.

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today i discovered - experienced- what meditation is

meditation is making love with God

“When the aesthetic sense, based on subtle aesthetic science, comes to touch a certain standard, it is what is called mysticism. And when this mysticism reaches the pinnacle of human glory, or the excellence of human glory, it is called spirituality.

What is mysticism? Mysticism is the never-ending endeavour to find out the link between the finite and the infinite. It is a never-ending endeavour to find out a link between the self and the Super-Self. This is mysticism.”

Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, in Yoga Psychology

A few days ago, while browsing the shelves of a closing-down sale at a second-hand bookshop, I stumbled across a copy of Geraldine Brooks’ novel, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001). On a whim I decided to buy it, not knowing quite what to expect.

Very quickly, the engaging narrative brought me under its spell. It weaves a fiction based on the real experiences of the Peak District ‘plague village’ of Eyam, which, in an act of self-sacrifice, voluntarily quarantined itself when it became infected with the Great Plague in 1666.

The story is told from the point of view of a seemingly common young woman, Anna Frith, who works as a housemaid to the visionary rector and his wife. However, as the tale unfolds, this young woman, amidst the great loss and suffering brought by the disease, undergoes a startling transformation. Read more…

“The Cosmic Entity alone is infinite and eternal. It alone is limitless. And the eternal longing of human beings for happiness can only be satiated by realisation of the Infinite.

The ephemeral nature of worldly possessions, power and position can only lead one to the conclusion that none of the things of the finite and limited world can set at rest the everlasting urge for happiness. Their acquisition merely gives rise to further longing. Only realisation of the Infinite can do it.

The Infinite can be only one, and that is the Cosmic Entity. Hence it is only the Cosmic Entity that can provide everlasting happiness — the quest for which is the characteristic of every human being.

In reality, behind this human urge is hidden the desire, the longing, for attainment of the Cosmic Entity. It is the very nature of every living being. This alone is the dharma [the fundamental nature] of every person.”

- Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, in ‘Ananda Marga: Elementary Philosophy‘